


Miss Cooper and the Unconventional Earl, Or: Everything Changes

by Stranger



Series: The Unconventional Earl of Torchwood [1]
Category: Torchwood
Genre: Alternate Universe - Regency, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-11
Updated: 2010-05-11
Packaged: 2017-10-09 09:52:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/85907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stranger/pseuds/Stranger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Miss Gwenevra Cooper stops in Cardiff on her way to a London season, and meets Captain Harkness the Earl of Torchwood, and other members of his peculiar establishment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Miss Cooper and the Unconventional Earl, Or: Everything Changes

**Author's Note:**

> First posted on the LJ community tw_flashfic, August 2007, for the "Out of Time" challenge. Any spoilers, which would be for the first few episodes of Torchwood, are all vagued-up by the transition to AU Regency setting.

Atop a magnificent establishment in Cardiff, a rangy man in an exquisitely tailored greatcoat peered into the eyepiece of his telescope and murmured, "Oh my. We have something different to look at this time."

His slighter companion shrugged, although he did not give over his upward contemplation of the rarely-seen heavens. "It's cold enough to freeze a donkey's arse, Jack."

"Patience, my dour doctor. There aren't enough clear nights in March to waste one, even if we had a willing donkey. Ianto, what's the time?"

"Four of the clock, thirty-three and a quarter minutes, my lord."

"Note it," said Jack, still immersed in the telescopic view, "against a log entry of _bloody big meteor_."

"Yes, my lord. On this day the tenth of March, year of Our Lord 1818, Jack Harkness, Earl of Torchwood, spotted a bloody big meteor in his telescopic looking-tube."

"Careful, Ianto, or I won't name it after you."

The so-called doctor, who in truth had a great deal of medical expertise as well as an advanced degree in philosophical studies, shifted his contemplation to the shadowy outline of Cardiff's streets four stories beneath them. The pre-dawn darkness was broken only by scattered points of torchlight to the south, and absolute darkness from the parklands to the north. "Where do you suppose it will come down?" he asked. "London? China?"

"In an ocean or the frozen wastes of Siberia, most likely," said Jack.

"Oh, don't be tiresome. It should land on a village in Cotswold or a hill in Caerlon, or perhaps on Estelle when she's in her garden."

Jack gave him a level look. "I trust that your reference is in no way meant as disrespectful to my beloved Aunt Estelle, your hostess here in Torchwood House."

"Of course not! I meant, of course, Estella Flower, a charming acquaintance of mine who works in Covent Garden."

"No doubt," said Jack, and perhaps it was by reflex his eyebrows returned the waggle Owen's brows semaphored regarding the young woman.

They were interrupted by a footman's steps on the small walkway outside the cupola that had been fitted up as an astronomical observatory. "My lord! Sir Ianto! The menagerie has suffered an escape! His lordship's performing bear took it into his head to climb out through the sunroof, and could not be stopped! He's loose in the town!"

"Jacky's escaped?" asked Ianto. "What about the rest of the animals?"

"Jacky shouldn't be able to _reach_ the sunroof!" sputtered Owen Harper. "Wasn't he locked in for the night?"

"Of course, Doctor Harper. We are mystified as to the manner of his escape." He shook his head, and ventured, "He was wearing the collar with your lordship's device."

"Kinky," said Jack, approvingly. "I like his style. Perhaps we should name the meteor after him."

Sir Ianto coughed. "It might be seen as an unmentionable levity, my lord."

"We can say I'm naming it after myself. No one will mind that, will they?"

Sir Ianto sighed, managing to make it sound ironic. "No, my lord. Now as to finding the, ah, bear -- Jacky, not the constellation -- before he wreaks havoc in all of Cardiff..."

"Right you are," said Jack, and the three of them followed the footman down the cupola's staircase.

"Are the pigs and badgers and the turtles and giant carp all still in their cages? What about Rhiannon and Myfanwy?"

"I saw the bat flying through the large drawing room, my lord. The less courageous members of the staff have taken refuge in the back kitchens."

Owen ignored the use of "bat" for the rare creature Myfanwy represented. The Torchwood House staff simply didn't have the appreciation of time's oddities that he'd learned from Jack Harkness.

#

Miss Cooper looked at the buildings up and down Westgate Street, more small and large buildings than she'd ever seen in one acre together. In the unseen distance, the buildings multiplied into streets, quarters and somewhere in the unknown depths of the city, a grand market. "It's a crowded place, isn't it," she said to her brother Andrew. They were looking for the High Street and the Cardiff Castle, which was reported to be very old, and reputed to be very romantic.

"It's not a patch on London," said Andrew, from the lofty eminence of his fifteen months of seniority.

"How would _you_ know?"

"Father has seen London," said Andrew. He loomed tall and pale in the morning's heavy mist, in contrast to Gwenevra's dark, sturdy grace. "He said last night that this is hardly a great city, in comparison."

"Miss Butterworth has said..." began Gwenevra, and Andrew grimaced. Gwen was Miss Butterworth's favorite and more successful pupil of the two of them, by far.

"Miss Butterface hasn't been to London, either."

"Well, I'm only afraid that if London is more of a city than this" -- they had just turned a corner onto a street both narrower and smelling strongly of _city_ to Gwen's country-bred nose, even though the row of buildings was made of the same brown-yellow stone as Uncle Fitzmore's substantial town house -- "I shall _stifle_ before the Season even starts!"

"That's putting it far too missish," advised her brother. "You rattle on a fair bit, Gwen, but I'd back you to knock down a building before you let it get the better of you."

"I think I might do that," muttered Gwen.

They'd arrived in Cardiff yesterday evening with their father, to stay with Aunt Elyned and Uncle Roger Fitzmore for a few days to break their journey to London. Aunt Elyned, who was father's sister, would go with them to London to chaperone Gwenevra and present her. Even after two days of jolting travel and with the prospect of many days more, Gwen's excitement at the thought of seeing Cardiff and then London was undiminished.

Gwen and Andrew, upon rising after a short night's sleep, had discovered at their early breakfast that no other members of the household were yet awake. "The mistress gave instructions that you might have breakfast in the small parlor whenever you want it," Twigg had said, when they arrived downstairs at the large parlor they'd seen only through a haze of sleepiness last night. "Mr Fitzmore is not an early riser, and he has given instructions that any of your party who remain asleep, should not be disturbed."

"He means Father," said Gwenevra airily to the butler. "Could you show us to the breakfast parlor, please?"

Gwen and Andrew had taken their early breakfast in haste, Gwen anxious to see the enormous metropolis of Cardiff. Andrew, her dutiful and protective brother, had long ago given up dissuading her from making any excursion upon which her heart might be set, most particularly when he, also, had never seen such a city as Cardiff.

Now, wrapped in her new green pelisse against the cold fog that carried odors and muffled sounds unknown on a farm, Gwen said, a little uncertainly, "I quite hoped to see shops and the market building that's been spoken of, and, oh, perhaps one of the castles here that Miss Butterworth says are so very historical. Why are there only _houses_?" She kicked at a protruding cobble with one of her new walking-boots.

No shops or castles appeared.

"I think we might find something better at the end of this street." Andrew hastened toward the daylight at the far end of the narrow alley, Gwen close on his heels, and they shortly burst into a broad street populated with delivery carts, cart men, porters, house-servants, bundles of goods, and horses drawing more carts.

"Is this what you're looking for?" asked Andrew, as a gray horse and cloaked rider appeared out of the downhill mist, narrowly missed stepping on his foot, and entered the straggle of traffic visible where the land rose to the north.

"Where's the marketplace?" Gwen had to raise her voice over a clatter of wooden clogs on the paving-stones as four laden porters emerged from the gray fog and trotted upwards toward faint sunlight.

"Up that way." Andrew set off up the street with determination, for once leading, instead of following Gwen.

Gwen didn't quite know why she noticed the beast. It didn't move like a man; perhaps that was why. It stood as high as a short man, and was thickly muffled in dark fur. It shuffled heavily, although it wasn't carrying anything, but it had an air of purpose, as though pursuing something. It turned into another street, passing a signpost with a mud-spattered painting of a loaf of bread.

It wasn't a man, and it wasn't a four-legged beast, and it most certainly wasn't a bird. It was a new wonder to be seen, and Gwen followed it.

The new street also contained people going every direction, some shouting, some carrying bundles or buckets or trays, some heavily dressed. Gwen spotted her beast, moving like hills rolling under a blanket of fur as it push-pulled itself into an alley between two buildings. She hurried to catch up without knowing what she would do if she succeeded.

The small, dark tunnel between two walls stank like a midden, or worse. Gwen told herself that a midden was nothing new to a farmer's daughter (for all that he was a gentleman-farmer with plenty of men to deal with middens) and pushed on, trying not to let her new pelisse brush the encrusted walls.

She heard a coughing gasp, like a choked-off scream. Gwen burst out into a tiny courtyard, and saw the beast almost on all fours, clawing and biting at a man collapsed in a heap on the blood-soaked ground between her and it.

There was a lot of blood. Gwenevra, a farmer's daughter (even though the bailiffs and herders would say, "Nay, missy, 'tisn't your place" when she came to the pig-yard in October, they'd let her watch while they worked), looked instead at the strange brown-black beast with the teeth. It wasn't a dog or a wolf, and nothing like a man, but it moved with heavy grace for all the lumpishness of its shape. Only a ray of weak morning sunlight, that cast momentary shadows on gray buildings and dark-stained dirt, convinced her that it wasn't a troll, a stone thing come to life with malevolence.

Its sharp little black eyes pointed at her, and Gwenevra backed up. It was alive and aware. It could kill a person. She'd seen the gush of an animal's lifeblood before, and she recognized it now from the man in gray-and-brown clothes, duller, dirtier clothes than any of the farm-men would wear.

Steps -- two pairs of feet in a human rhythm -- from the alley behind reassured Gwen that she wasn't alone with either the fur beast or the bleeding man. She turned, trying not to let the beast out of her sight, and would have called them to help the poor man nearly at her feet, but two more people appeared from the alley-entrance opposite as well, bulky shapes in greatcoats. Those two ran to secure the beast, but her attention was caught by the tall one who'd come in behind her.

He glanced down at her on his way to the bleeding man. "Let me see to this poor lad, Miss. Owen! Doctor, here's a patient for you!"

The last of the newcomers, a shorter, wry-faced man in a dark cloak, knelt on the rough paving and opened a satchel. He spoke without looking at anything else. "I'll do what I can, but your pet looks like having killed this person, Jack. If you're lucky. That, er, bear is a caution, and his temper is worse than a bear's."

"So is mine," said the tall man, and noticed Gwen again. "Ah, Miss, you must have a cool head if you're not in hysterics over some blood spilt."

His tone might have been dismissive, but Gwen pulled herself together. "I'm Miss Cooper, sir. There's rather a _lot_ of blood, wouldn't you say?" She wanted him to say that the man wasn't as good as dead, lying in the dirty street in a pool of mud and blood.

The dark-cloaked man, the doctor, said without looking up from where his hands were covered now in gore up to the wrists, "Is that chit in the green pelisse still here? Hasn't she fainted yet?"

"I'm not going to faint," said Gwen, exasperated. "It's only a man's lifeblood, nothing important."

"Touché," said the tall one. "I'm pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Cooper." He reached for the hand she'd started to hold out to him by social reflex, raised it and kissed it. "Please forgive Owen for being short when he's working. Can you stand here and hand him bandages, Miss Cooper?"

"It'll be too close, even with another pair of hands," said the doctor, Owen.

"If I don't see after Jacky myself, he'll give Ianto and Joseph even more grief than he should. It can't be easy, being stuffed into a cage all the time."

"I can handle bandages," said Gwen.

"Good," said the tall man, and thrust a roll of linen into her hands, and then a small, stoppered glass jar. "He'll want this too. I'll be back very shortly, and then I'll help clean your boots if I have to do it myself."

Gwen looked down, and realized that her new walking-boots were stained with mud, blood, and everything else the alley smelled of. Probably the hem of her pelisse was, as well. "Oh."

"Brave girl," he said, "for staying with Owen when he's in a mood."

"I'll want the wrappings in a moment," said Owen's voice, "and the fungal tincture _now_, if you please." He spared a glance at Gwen and at the tall man's departing back, and back to the items in Gwen's hands. "Miss." It was a command. "Unstopper it for me." Both his hands were busy, she could see.

Gwen pulled out the cork-encased top and held out the tiny flask. Instead of coaxing the injured man to drink it, he took it in two blood-stained fingers and poured a trickle of musty-smelling fluid onto the none-too-clean wound revealed in the man's now-naked shoulder. Gwen averted her eyes, but the doctor barked, "Here, stop it up again, and I need the cloth, now. Ah, hold this." He pushed her hand down flat on the linen-covered wound, and then bandaged the shoulder over and around, more neatly than Gwen expected.

"Are you a barber-surgeon?" she asked, retrieving her hand.

"I'm a gentleman, a scholar, and when necessary I'm a surgeon's assistant."

Everyone knew that surgeons followed battlefields. "Did you fight in the war?" asked Gwen, in awe. Even a country miss knew the soldiers who'd defeated Bonaparte were heroes.

"Not I, Miss Cooper. That would be Jack. Captain Harkness, he was."

"It was nothing," said the tall man, re-appearing like a conjuror's trick. "Are you done, Owen? Miss Cooper, you'd best come back to Torchwood House, and my housekeeper will clean your clothes and my aunt will give you tea."

"That's very good of you, sir," began Gwen, conscious of the many, many strictures Miss Butterworth had drilled into her about speaking to men she hadn't met properly. That awareness was by now nearly vanquished by a growing shiver of both cold and shocked reaction.

"You're new in Cardiff," said Captain Harkness. "I'd have met you, otherwise. You're probably lost. Do you really want to try to find your way home with your dress and cloak all over mud and a man's lifeblood?"

Gwenevra pictured arriving at Uncle Fitzmore's house in her now very soiled dress, pelisse and boots, and trying to explain how they got that way. "Did you say you that beast is yours? Did it kill that man?"

"Yes, and, I fear, it's likely to be yes," said Captain Harkness. "I'm sorry, Miss Cooper."

"He could have children!" she said. "Or a wife! Or, a wife and children." She stopped short and felt herself blushing.

"He could," said the captain, ignoring her confusion like a gentleman. "I've already started inquiries about it. Come, Miss Cooper. I'm Jack Harkness. I give you my word that I have no improper intentions toward you. As well, I'll lend you my coat." He swung the greatcoat off his shoulders and over hers, and offered her his arm.

Captain Harkness led Gwenevra down the stone streets between stone buildings as the sun rose higher and the sky cleared to a diffuse haze. Her muddy clothes were covered by the very warm greatcoat and she knew she was in some kind of suds no matter what she did. She'd have to make the best of it and hope she could explain it to Father and Uncle Roger later. After one short street up and one smaller street over along a green park, the Captain halted and knocked at an imposing door which was, nevertheless, clearly not a town house's front entrance.

"It's my house's side door," he said, to her confused look. "It's less public than the front steps, and it won't be remarked if my housekeeper comes out here for a moment. Mrs Boyd," he addressed the gray-haired, gray-dressed woman who opened the door, "here's a guest for Aunt Estelle. She had a brush with Jacky and she came away with mud and whatnot on her clothes. I'm sure you can organize a bit of clean-up for her while she and Aunt Estelle have breakfast."

"Mr Jack! You're never bringing a young lady..." she shot Gwen a careful glance that took in the remains of Gwen's new pelisse, "yes, a lady, here!"

Captain Harkness whisked his greatcoat off her shoulders. "Miss Cooper, this is Mrs Boyd, my kind and wonderfully capable housekeeper."

"I'm very pleased to meet you," said Gwen, as if Mrs Boyd were someone at a tea party. "Oh, dear, my brother will be looking for me! I lost him when I saw the strange beast. Andrew was walking with me, and now he won't know where I am!"

The Captain was momentarily surprised but Mrs Boyd looked much happier. "Of course a young lady wouldn't be out walking alone in the early morning!"

"Of course not," echoed Captain Harkness. "Mr Andrew Cooper, is that right? Is he near your age?" Gwen nodded. "I'll have someone find him and bring him here."

"He'll be frantic for you, I should think," said Mrs Boyd. "Miss, you'd best come in now, out of the damp. I'll take you up to Miss Estelle's parlor." She led Gwen along a dim passageway and up stairs into daylight through thick-glassed windows. "If you'll permit, I'll fetch you a wrapper and slippers, like Miss Estelle wears for breakfast, while I have someone see to your clothes. Your pretty boots will need a bit of work to get clean, I'm afraid."

"I'm sorry to put you to trouble," said Gwen.

"'Tis only a bit of trouble, Miss, and I know Miss Estelle will be glad of company." The second flight of stairs led to a wider, carpeted corridor. "My lord has his odd turns, but he's a gentleman, never fear."

"Lord...?" said Gwen, confused. "Captain Harkness said this was his house."

"Bless you, Miss, he's the Earl of Torchwood now. He was Captain Harkness before that, in the war."

The wrapper Mrs Boyd brought Gwen proved to be two garments: a smooth linen underwrap that would have been nearly respectable in itself over her (fortunately still-clean) chemise, and an outer robe, a sort of open sack-dress, embroidered with pink flowers and blue leaves on satin. "How _very_ beautiful!" she exclaimed.

"'Tis the sort of thing Miss Estelle favors," said the housekeeper, as she helped Gwen out of the blood-smeared walking dress and into the wrapper. "Her breakfast parlor is this way."

When Gwenevra came into Miss Estelle's breakfast parlor, ransacking her memory for some way a proper young lady could introduce herself to a hostess who could scarcely know she existed -- Miss Butterworth hadn't given any lesson about it, she was sure -- she was much reassured to see that Miss Estelle did indeed wear a similar wrapper. Miss Estelle's, however, was a glory of brocade that must have come from the Orient, all golden lions and silver mice with winking crystal eyes.

"Good morning, my dear. I'm Estelle Collier. How charming it is to have a companion for breakfast! Do sit down and have a muffin, or a bit of pheasant pie. And tea, of course. My nephew said you're an angel of mercy, but he neglected to mention your name. I quite expected wings and an effusion of glory, from his description."

"I'm Gwenevra Cooper, ma'am. I'm not much of an angel, I'm afraid. Just Miss Cooper." Miss Estelle had clipped-short gray hair, no wig, bright sharp eyes and a very decided nose. She could never have been conventionally beautiful, but there was no denying that she had a charm that made her memorable.

"Miss Cooper will do nicely." Estelle served both of them with saffron-painted muffins and delicate tea in tiny, fragile china cups. It was only a few minutes later that a footman knocked on the door.

"Miss Susan Costellon has arrived, Ma'am."

Estelle smiled conspiratorially and asked Gwen, "Shall we have her in?"

Gwen nodded, having no idea what she might be assenting to. A moment later, a tall young woman in a very smart persimmon riding habit strode into the parlor. Her boots were clean, Gwen noticed. She hadn't been out riding yet this morning.

"Oh, Auntie Estelle--" she said and stopped, seeing Gwen and, no doubt, the pink-flowered wrapper.

"Susan, this is Miss Cooper. Gwenevra, this is one of my great-nieces, Susan Costellon."

"It's an honor to meet you," said Gwen, automatically. Miss Costellon's riding habit was as expertly molded to her excellent figure as the earl's jacket had been to his, and her modish gray velvet shako sported persimmon-red feathers.

"And you," said Susan, in a response that was patently just as automatic. Glossy dark curls tumbled to surround her face as she removed the shako. Her dark, bright eyes would have made Byron's Corsair swoon, let alone Captain Harkness, Lord Torchwood. Was she a sister or cousin of his? "However did you come to Torchwood House?"

"It was the beast--" said Gwen. "Capt-- Lord Torchwood called it Jacky."

Susan Costellon's eyes widened. "Do you mean to say you've seen Jacky?" she inquired in well-bred accents that could not disguise a hint of disquiet.

"It's only one of Jack's pets," said Estelle. "When I was a girl, we had monkeys and peacocks and pageboys and sometimes a ferret for the children. Now it's all bears and bats and parrots."

"Auntie, they're not toys. Jacky and the others are _far_ too dangerous for children!"

"Much you know about it, gel. Jack's a man grown. He can deal with Jacky and Myfanwy and all the pixies in Caer-na-von!" Estelle took on a glowing assurance. "They live in the stoneworks when they can find them, you know. They only live underground when they've no other choice."

"Underground?" said Gwen in confusion. "Foxes? Ferrets?"

"Fairies, child. Pixies."

"Aunt Estelle," said Miss Costellon, firmly taking charge of the conversation, "I think Miss Cooper would like to see the library, with your watercolors."

"Oh, yes, I've painted the fairies I saw, my dear," said Miss Estelle to Gwen. "I couldn't bear not to show them to someone else who might appreciate them."

"Of course I should like to see them, very much," said Gwen, in truth more intrigued by Estelle than the fairies she might have seen.

"Go along with you, then, both of you. Susan, be sure to show her the 'Dance in the Forest.'"

"It's quite scandalous, Auntie."

"I know." Estelle's eyes twinkled, suddenly fey. "It will do you both good."

"Auntie!"

Miss Costellon hustled Gwenevra, wrapper and all, out of the breakfast parlor. "I think we're out just in time. Does she shock you very much?"

"Not at all," said Gwen, politely. She did not think any painting could upset her after this morning. "Whatever does she think will shock me?"

"I'm afraid Auntie Estelle, although of course she's as respectable as a matron now, had rather a career when our grandmothers were younger. It seems ladies talked more freely then. She talks very freely _now_, at any rate."

"I feel quite intrigued," said Gwen. "And scandalized, of course, but as you say, Miss Estelle is quite respectable now."

They turned into a long, wooden-tiled hallway. "Did Miss Estelle say she truly saw some fairies?" asked Gwen in a small voice.

"She does say that kind of thing," replied Miss Costellon. "Do I apprehend that you'll be travelling to London for the Season?"

"Yes, I will."

Susan Costellon smiled in a way that might be friendly. "So do we all. Auntie Estelle didn't think to mention it, but I'm betrothed to Torchwood."

"Does that mean you'll go to London this year as well?" asked Gwen, quashing an unjustified sense of disappointment. Lord Torchwood was handsome, and kind to a stranger who had been useful to him. Why should she expect that he wouldn't be already attached?

"I wouldn't miss _this_ season for anything. Anything!"

Gwen considered this for a moment, and then realized that Miss Costellon must be twenty at least, perhaps twenty-two or twenty-three. "How long have you been engaged? That is, I wish you happiness, of course."

"We agreed on the marriage last fall. Oh, and this is the older part of the house," said Miss Costellon, as the walls went from wainscotting to fitted stone. "This is Ja-- Torchwood's playground."

Gwen found herself descending a curved stairway into a well-lit room full of display cases and desks, all cluttered with papers and stones and odd mechanical devices she barely recognized. Bookshelves lined the walls and alcoves. "Is this the library?" One table supported a piled jumble of journals and news-sheets, nearly a score of them, including two or more that Gwen knew Father wouldn't allow her to read.

"This part of it is a library. I have to admit that it's intriguing to have leave to read anything I like. Oh, Ianto! Miss Cooper, this is Sir Ianto Jones, Torchwood's archivist and librarian."

Sir Ianto had hair cropped neatly, not dashingly, and a snub nose that made him look younger than Andrew, but his jacket fit beautifully and his pantaloons clung to his legs in such a way that both admirable tailoring and an admirable person were proclaimed in biscuit-colored twill.

"Also gadfly and resident fool," said Sir Ianto, somberly. "What brings you here, Miss Cooper?" He surveyed her pink flowers. "Oh, my, are you the young lady Jack found to help Owen? How fortuitous."

"Yes, it is," said Captain Harkness, or rather, the Earl of Torchwood, emerging from the other side of a tall bookshelf. He looked up from the ledger he was holding, or perhaps it was a notebook. Gwen glimpsed columns of numbers, but the facing page was some sort of diagram instead. The Earl was very much at home and unfashionably, unfairly handsome in tucked-up shirtsleeves, which did not seem to perturb Susan. "Well-met, Miss Cooper. Good morning, Suzie."

Gwen could not stop looking around the library, from the stone-flagged floor, past two galleries of alcoves ranged around the high center room of the library, up to a misty-hued skylight. There were spiral staircases in each corner. Gwen craned to look up the nearest one: three graceful turns eventually disappeared on the far side of the skylight dome. She finally managed to look back at the Earl and the notebook he was still holding.

"I don't mean to be rude, your lordship. The library is a great deal to take in."

He smiled. "So it is." He must have noticed her peeking at the notebook, for he tilted it toward her, open. "Do you recognize any of this?"

"It looks like geometry, but I don't see...?" She stopped at a notation in an unfamiliar alphabet.

"It's astronomy," he said, and although he was still smiling, his eyes watched her steadily.

"Astro... stars... is that the sky? Are you reading the stars?"

Sir Ianto said, "Jack, should you be showing Miss Cooper your charts if she's quick enough to decipher them?"

"Ah, but is she?" asked the Earl. He pointed at one page and turned the book round so Gwen could look at it right-side-up. "What stars are these?" he asked her.

Gwen focused after a moment on the page, and not on the long-fingered, perfectly kept hands that held the book. There were dots: small dots, large dots, in almost random scattering until Gwen tilted her head and looked sideways. The large dots made a pattern. "'Tis the great plough, that some call the great bear," she said, and hastily cleared her throat. That had come out in Davi's shepherd's brogue, complete with the disdain for English star-names. "All of them lead to the center star, the fire the others dance around."

"Ah... yes," said the Earl. "Miss Cooper, I suspect you of having spent more time than you ought with Welsh countrymen."

"Aye," she said, again in Davi's accent. The Earl laughed, and on a different note, so did Susan.

He turned a page, showing her mathematical calculations and a different chart. "These aren't truly stars, but planets," he said. "One can calculate where a planet should be, and if it's not there, one has to find out why. Sometimes the answer is another planet, one we haven't seen before."

Gwenevra had no idea what he was talking about. "How is that possible?"

He shrugged, and gave her a heart-stopping smile. "I don't really know either. I look for them where Owen and Toshi tell me to look. Owen would like to discover a planet and name it after himself. Toshi just likes numbers."

Susan gave a small cough, as though she doubted some part of his speech, but the Earl ignored her.

"This picture," Gwen motioned at the notebook full of diagrams with the symbols and dots for stars, "no matter what you call it, is beautiful, like art. It has symmetry and balance." Those were two of Miss Butterworth's favorite words.

"So it does." The Earl smiled again, this time as though Gwen were the only person in the room and she had just given him what he wanted most in the world. Gwen smiled back, hoping her heartbeat wasn't as loud to him as it was to her. He tapped the sky-diagram. "The book is the least of the art. The art is observing the sky, night after night, seeing the stars move and seeing what doesn't move, and devising calculations to understand it all."

"Do you understand it all?" asked Gwen, lost again.

"Not in a thousand years. Owen Harper doesn't either, although he won't admit it. What we both do is look at the sky in search of knowledge, rather than imagination."

"That's a question for debate," said Susan. "Jack, the sky can't tell you the future any more than reading entrails can."

The Earl was not discomfited. "Oh, I don't know. It might. Besides, we read entrails here, too."

Gwen looked again, wide-eyed, at the diagrams labelled in Latin and Greek and a language she couldn't even name, and at the bookshelves and unfathomable devices set out from one end of the library to the other, disappearing into alcoves and reappearing along the wall. Somewhere... perhaps up one of these staircases... there had to be paintings of fairies. And a telescope. And someone reading entrails. "What is this place?" she blurted.

The Earl smiled, looking again like the Captain Jack that Gwen had met early this morning. "Torchwood."

Gwen swallowed. This couldn't be the kind of thing a polite Miss Cooper should know, but she only wanted to know more. "You have a grand establishment, my lord. It's a beautiful library."

"Jack, Miss Cooper has been bidden by Aunt Estelle to see her water-color paintings. Perhaps we should look at those," said Susan Costellon, finally.

"Oh, do show her the landscapes and the pixies and all that," said the Earl. He made a note on the side of the star-diagram in some language that might have been Egyptian picture-writing, for all Gwen knew. Miss Butterworth had told her to be grateful she wasn't called to learn such complicated Eastern writing styles, when Gwen complained of having to write a neat hand in French.

"Miss Cooper might care that not all of the paintings in the gallery are quite what a gently-bred young lady should see, _especially_ when she's visiting the notorious Earl of Torchwood for the first time."

"Am I notorious?" asked the Earl, apparently bemused by the idea.

"You know you are!" She turned back to Gwenevra. "Miss Cooper, a visit with Miss Estelle Collier, who presides over Torchwood House, will do you no harm in Cardiff, but..." She looked to Gwen to supply the rest.

"It wouldn't be done for me to visit on his lordship's invitation, I know." Gwen clasped her hands. "Not even if I had nearly been eaten by Lord Torchwood's pet bear."

"Jacky doesn't eat young ladies of good breeding," protested the Earl.

"I can see that there's no reasoning with you," said Miss Costellon. "Come with me, Miss Cooper. Auntie Estelle's watercolors are up in the east gallery. If any of them put you to the blush, I'll take you to meet Toshi instead."

The east gallery contained a number of curious watercolors of fairy-like beings with wings, painted as though the lighting came from two (or three) suns instead of one. Near them hung some plain sketches, beautifully detailed.

"Did you draw these?" Gwen asked Miss Costellon, fascinated by the careful depiction of a human ear, and another, and a pair of hands. "They're very pleasing."

"Toshi -- Antoshica Satoe, a friend of mine -- will be happy to hear you say so. Then she'll explain how her drawings aren't perfect, for she has such a keen eye that she sees more than she or anyone could every draw accurately."

There were more drawings on the wall, all precisely rendered yet delicately perfect works of art. "I wish I could speak to her, Miss Costellon. These sketches are what I wish I could do, but I don't know how."

Miss Costellon gave an enigmatic nod. "I'm sure she'll be happy to meet you." She took Gwen down a half-twist of the spiral stairs to a new layer of the alcoves. At a table with odd wood-and-bead devices, all lit by two strongly-focused lamps, sat a young woman wearing a wrapper much like Gwen's but plain, her dark hair gathered haphazardly into a knot at the back of her head. She lifted her gaze from serene contemplation of a geometric chart of circles.

Miss Costellon said, "Miss Cooper, may I introduce Baron Satoe's daughter, Antoshica. Toshi, this is Gwenevra Cooper, and _please_ say you'll come away from looking for stars that don't exist, and drink some tea with us!"

Miss Satoe put down her fine-nibbed drawing pen. "Is it morning? Tea would be good. Chocolate would be better."

"Time and past for both," said the Earl, appearing behind Miss Costellon's shoulder. "You've missed all the excitement of finding Jacky."

"And of hearing Myfanwy scream when she was put back into her cage," added Doctor Harper.

Jack said, "Perhaps Mrs Boyd will have done something about Miss Cooper's clothing by now?"

"I'll have someone ask," said Owen, and disappeared down yet another stairwell.

They strolled past more alcoves holding arcane paraphernalia, most of which Gwen didn't recognize, but she didn't care. Gwenevra Cooper had been raised as to be a proper young lady, and she should have been appalled, or at best bored, by philosophy and natural science. Instead, she only wanted to see more.

#

Andrew Cooper spent a very anxious hour, and hoped it was less than an hour, looking for his sister. He told himself first that he was responsible for her, which everyone else would believe (except Gwen herself, and perhaps Father, but Father wouldn't say aloud that Gwenevra was willful and clever as a vixen). He told himself she was a clever, brave girl who had ridden and hunted and, one memorable summer, had herded sheep with him, and done it as well as he had. That sounded good in his mind, but not when he opened his eyes and was confronted with the sights, smells, and unknown streets of Cardiff, where a young lady could come to grief in any number of ways.

He circled buildings and tried to find himself again, and realized that he'd looked for Gwen and not for landmarks, and was now lost anyway. He had no choice but to continue looking, and being as much a Cooper as Gwenevra, he kept his head and tried to find his way to somewhere he could identify. _Higher ground_, he thought. _I need to be able to look around._ His feet, treacherously, had taken him downhill.

At this point in his ruminations he reached the Cardiff dockside, and stared in dismay at the expanse of wet mud between the dock and the water. They were to take ship here, to cross to England, in a week's time. Where was the sea? The area was not quite deserted, but none of the ill-dressed people he had glimpsed as he passed through the reeking fog here inspired him with confidence in their good will. Gwen thought everybody would like her, and he had to find her before she learned differently.

He turned around and, sure enough, there _was_ higher ground behind him, rising out of the now-thinning mist. All he had to do was follow the streets back the way he'd come, to the high street. And not lose himself, this time. And pray.

He presently arrived very nearly where he'd started and recognized the area, if not the place where he stood. Where was Gwen?

She wasn't in sight, but two men in gray livery looked halfway familiar. Had he seen them before? This morning? Andrew was debating the wisdom of asking one or the other for directions or news or whether they'd seen a young lady in a peascod-green pelisse with a hood, when one of them caught his eye. "Young sir, might you be Mr Andrew Cooper?"

"Ahhh, yes," he managed, flustered.

"We're from Torchwood House. The Earl of Torchwood sends you his compliments and begs leave to say that Miss Cooper is visiting his aunt, Miss Estelle. Would you care to join them?"

What was a young gentleman to do at an invitation like that? Andrew took in a deep breath. "The Earl is very kind. Please take me to my sister." It only occurred to him as he walked with the two footmen -- an earl would have footmen to carry his messages, wouldn't he? -- that Gwen was evidently visiting the earl's aunt. Oh, well, good. Ladies visited ladies, not gentlemen. Did Gwen _know_ this earl's aunt?

He was taken up a magnificent broad staircase to a magnificent carved-wood door, which opened on a magnificent stone-tiled entrance hall furnished with expensive, haphazard taste. The drawing-room to which he was ushered was merely opulent, in black and white, but he noticed very little of it because Gwen was sitting on a white sofa in her yellow-striped walking dress, holding a cup of chocolate and talking with two young ladies and a gentleman.

"... prefers Urania to Calliope or Terpsichore," said the gentleman, who was wearing close-fitted trousers and a waistcoat that Andrew instantly envied. The gentleman sipped from a cup that wafted a strong odor of coffee.

"Whereas I like Clio," said the young lady with smooth dark hair and ivory skin. "Gwenevra, which of them speaks to you?"

Gwen put down her cup and saucer on a black-lacquer table, looking politely at sea, as well she might. If she recognized more than one Greek name in ten, Andrew would be surprised.

"Thalia, perhaps?" ventured a dark beauty in a riding habit, who sat in a black silk armchair that framed her as if for a picture.

"Perhaps I should choose Melpomena," said Gwen, and the other three nodded. Only Andrew knew that Melpomena was Uncle Roger's sister's name, and probably the only Greek word Gwen could even start to pronounce without coaching.

From the door behind him, a new voice said, "But now that your Odysseus has returned to claim you, Melpomene would be quite out of countenance." Everyone looked toward Andrew, Gwen's face relieved and all the others', inquiring.

The owner of the new voice came forward and offered Andrew a handshake. "I'm Torchwood, sir. May I introduce my fiancée and two other friends, who I am sure will thank you for your sister's company? And will you have tea or chocolate?"

"Or coffee?" suggested the young man in the enviable waistcoat.

#

When the Cooper pair had been escorted away toward Westport street by a footman, and Toshi and Owen had gone back to their researches, Susan sought out the Earl in his small study, where he was adding notes to the previous night's observation of the heavens. "Jack Harkness, can you tell me something?"

"Anything for you, Suzie," said Jack, not looking up from the calculations of Saturn's orbital speed.

"Tell me truly, Jack, if you prefer your observatory and your library to me."

"You love my library," he said, looking up at last.

"I don't want to marry it. I want to marry you."

"How fortunate that we're already betrothed, then," he said, smiling at her as brilliantly and lovingly as he had the day he asked her to marry him.

"Are you sure you're not engaged to Aunt Estelle, or Antoshica, or Miss Cooper, or Ianto or Jacky?" she inquired.

He paused for an instant. "No, just to you," he assured her, smiling again, seemingly oblivious. "You're as perfect as the stars in the sky."

"You only see the stars through your telescope." Jack's obsession with the night sky had prevented him from squiring her to more than a few social functions where she would have liked to be seen in his company.

"They're better that way," he assured her. "More beautiful. Do you think you might have Miss Cooper invited to that soirée you want me to attend? The one in two days' time?"

The blatant volte-face nearly stunned her. "Ah... but, why?"

Jack shrugged as if it should be obvious. "So I can be introduced to her formally, and then Estelle can invite her to tea. The way she does you," he added helpfully.

Susan's heart lurched. It wasn't that he liked Gwenevra Cooper particularly, she told herself, but that he considered everyone at Torchwood no more than instruments of his schemes. "Is that to save her good name, since she'll certainly betray having met _you_? It can't signify. All you need do is cut her completely, so no one will believe she knows who she's talking to. It will be the same in the end."

"She liked the library," said Jack, obviously trying to be persuasive. "I want her to visit again and see what she thinks of Jacky when he's behaving himself."

"Oh, is the library and the menagerie and the _natural science_ all that matters in this house?"

"It's important," said Jack. "Suzie, perfect Susan, you know that. You've seen that science is a truth that we can read. What better thing is there to devote one's life to?"

Susan knew he was half right. Jack Harkness wasn't humble like a cleric, but his stars were God's stars and his creatures were God's creatures. And yet... the humans in Cardiff and London were real, true creatures also, and she needed them as well. She couldn't live only inside Torchwood House. "It's not everything. It's not London and society."

Jack's candid blue eyes looked into hers. "Perhaps not, but the work we're doing here may be more important than going about in society. I think Miss Cooper could be interested in it as well."

Susan lost her temper, very quietly. "Oh, you're hopeless. I was looking forward to this Season and then to being Lady Torchwood, but if you're _still_ picking up strays who like books more than conversation, and you _still_ pay heed to Aunt Estelle's fancies, I'm not sure it's worth doing. I'm not sure..."

Jack's smooth broad forehead framed by short strands of lamentably uncurled hair (one of his few physical imperfections) creased as his eyebrows drew together. Perhaps at last he was aware that she was trying to say something important. "What are you not sure of?"

"I'm not sure of you." Susan gathered her ire, shaping it into determination. If she didn't say this now, her mother and her expectations would push her back into the alliance with Jack Harkness, where a few mutual concerns simply could not add up to a lifetime. "I don't know that I truly want to marry you. Torchwood is a great thing, but it's not everything. Not for me."

His smile came back, dim and perhaps -- at last -- unbelieving. "Then, I don't know that you should. It is, of course, your decision. The Torchwood library and everything else here is my lifework. It's an archive of knowledge for future generations."

Susan sighed. "I'm living now, Jack. Not in the future. I'd want to live with you _now_, in the world as well as in the mind." She took a deep breath. "I'll send a notice to the _Gazette_ that our betrothal is to be dissolved."

He said, exquisitely polite and quite without expression, "If you must do so, Miss Costellon, I will not deny you. I had thought that you shared my enthusiasm for this lifework."

"I thought I did," said Susan, aghast at herself, "but I can't live it and do nothing else."

"I see." Jack had picked up the journal where he recorded his astronomical observations, but he wasn't writing in it, and in fact seemed to be staring at a blank page. "I don't suppose you'll be attending Lady Satoe's soirée, then? Because I believe I shall."

"In that case," Susan gathered her years of experience as a dutiful daughter and a proper debutante, and felt them shatter. "No!" she said, rather more loudly than she'd intended. She turned and left, closing the library's outer door with a snap that missed being a slam by very little, and resounded in Jack's mind like a gunshot.

#

Andrew and Gwenevra were accompanied home by one of the gray-liveried footmen, who bid them a good morning only when they were standing on the steps of Uncle Fitzmore's yellow-stone house on Westgate Street. Gwen, now that the adventure was over, could not help feeling some apprehension. An hour's sight-seeing in the quiet morning would have been one thing, but three hours and a visit to a house where she'd never met anyone before was quite another. She didn't even care to think about the soiled walking-dress and pelisse, now clean and merely damp, and the boots brushed to a finer sheen than she'd started out with.

Gwen had had to spend only a few minutes as they walked in convincing Andrew that she'd been out of his sight for only perhaps a quarter-hour -- or so he was relieved to think. They'd tell Father and Uncle Fitzmore that when they'd been lost in the confusion of High Street, Lord Torchwood had recognized them as a young lady and gentleman and had offered them help, which had led to meeting his aunt, his fiancée Miss Susan Costellon, and morning tea in the black-and-white drawing room of his mansion.

They were met by an anxious Twigg. "Oh Miss, Sir, it's good you're back. The mistress and Mr Cooper have just come down to breakfast and are asking for you!"

He brought Gwen and Andy back into the breakfast parlor they'd left deserted in the early morning. Sunshine lighted the high windows, but the chafing dishes and platters might have been poised in time between then and now: the eggs steamed gently, the ham gave off meaty fragrance, the warm muffins and cool butter and the serving-maid with the teapot were arranged just as they had been before.

The room, however, was no longer empty of family. Gwenevra's father and her aunts regarded Gwenevra's and Andrew's return with expressions of relief and surprise, and from her father, the irritation that follows an unneeded alarm.

"You really shouldn't have left the house without telling anyone," said Mr Cooper gently.

"Oh, Father, we didn't think of it! We wanted to see the city in the morning quiet, and you were asleep."

"That's understandable, I suppose, even if you should have told Twigg or left me a note. Did you see the city, then?"

"Jacob, they were brought back by one of Torchwood's people." That was Uncle Fitzmore's sister, who might be convinced to come to London with them. Gwen wasn't yet sure if she wanted a second chaperone.

"Mellie, let them tell us about it." Aunt Elyned turned back to Gwen and Andrew. "What did you see?"

"We met Lord Torchwood," said Gwen baldly. This seemed better than explaining how separately they'd met him.

"The _Earl of Torchwood?_" asked Aunt Elyned, eyes suddenly wide.

"Yes, he called himself Captain Harkness, and he introduced me to Miss Estelle and Miss Susan Costellon and," Gwen's thoughts rapidly summed up her tour through the library as not quite suitable for her relatives, "we talked for quite a time. Miss Estelle paints watercolors."

"Gwen, darling, Andrew, _how_ did you meet him?"

Oh, dear. Gwenevra said carelessly, "Oh, one of his pets had got loose, and I saw it and followed it because I didn't know what it was. And then the Earl and some of his people came round to catch it, and we were lost and asked them where we were."

Andrew accepted this version of events without a blink. Gwen felt sure that her description would not alarm her anxious relatives as much as blood, surgery and accompanying the Earl of Torchwood quite alone to his house would have done.

Aunt Elyned stared at them. "Darling Gwen, Susan Costellon is betrothed to Torchwood. Never say she was dangling out for an unknown miss's conversation before breakfast."

"Oh, Aunt, she was wonderfully kind! And Miss Estelle too! Miss Estelle wanted me to see her paintings. And Miss Costellon's friend Antoshica was there as well. She does beautiful drawings."

Aunt Fitzmore said, "My dear Elyned, Estelle Collier would keep a monkey talking for hours if she had a whim for it. Still, this could be useful. Gwenevra, do you mean to say that Lord Torchwood made you acquainted with his aunt and Susan Costellon and Antoshica Satoe?"

"Oh, yes," said Gwen, hoping the edited sequence of the morning's activities would not be scrutinized too closely.

"I wonder," said Aunt Fitzmore, evidently thinking.

"What do you wonder, Mellie?" Uncle Roger buttered part of a plain muffin, also frowning thoughtfully.

Aunt Fitzmore looked carefully at Gwen. "Torchwood's a bit of an eccentric, and his aunt more so. Who's to say they'll recognize you next they see you?"

"I'm sure I don't know why he should. He talks a great deal, but it's all about stars and Greek." And some other things Gwen didn't care to mention just yet. "I conversed mostly with Miss Costellon and Miss Satoe. They both seem to have a great deal of sensibility."

"Hmmm." Aunt Fitzmore looked at her tea, and back up at Gwen. "That's true, as much as I know of them. And perhaps Torchwood will behave as he ought and acknowledge you as well. It would be best to be prepared for such an eventuality."

Aunt Elyned gave a little gasp. "What do you have in mind?"

"You might try on an afternoon dress I have, and we'll see to fitting it," said Aunt Fitzmore, to Gwen. "I've had it from London, and the new style doesn't entirely suit me, but I think it might look very good on you, Gwenevra. I'll make sure we attend Lady Satoe's musical afternoon."

#

Mrs Fitzmore and Miss Melpomena Fitzmore, and their guests, received four callers that afternoon. Mrs and Miss Fletcher professed themselves eager to meet the Coopers, the mother scrutinizing Gwen until (Gwen thought) she must have decided that her daughter Carys was prettier. It was certain that Miss Fletcher was pretty enough that Andrew enjoyed her flirting with him.

Lady Satoe, a tiny and meticulously turned-out beauty, arrived in mid-afternoon for a brief call. She wished to assure the Fitzmores that Mr Cooper and Mr Andrew and Miss Cooper were to be included in the invitation to her upcoming musical soirée. She added that her daughter Antoshica also sent an entreaty that Gwenevra should renew acquaintance with her there. No mention was made of the meeting at Torchwood House in so many words, but Lady Satoe did say, not quite casually, "Oh, and my friend Estelle's nephew Torchwood has promised to look in. One never knows what starts he'll find himself in at a particular hour, but we may _hope_ he will look in."

Ahah, Gwen thought, Lord Torchwood was the unreliable sort, as a social hostess counted such things. Then she wondered if it was Torchwood or Gwenevra Cooper whom Lady Satoe considered unreliable.

Late in the afternoon Mrs Hugh-Price, a friend of Aunt Elyned's, pronounced Gwenevra a charming young lady, but her news was far more momentous. "Dear Mrs Fitzmore, I've just heard the most astonishing thing! The Costellon girl is going to cry off Torchwood! I can't believe it!"

"That can hardly be true," said Aunt Fitzhugh. "They've had a sort of family understanding since she was a child. If she thought they wouldn't suit, she could have chosen someone else any time these last three years."

"Oh, well, one doesn't know a man at first. And I don't think Estelle likes her."

"Nonsense," said Aunt Elyned. "That is, you're too much right. Estelle doesn't like seeing that handsome Harkness boy with anyone else. She liked his father too well to like seeing the son married, I might think."

Mr Cooper blinked. "I must have been rusticating too long, Elyned. Did you mean to say that this peer's aunt regards him as more than a nephew?"

"Ahhh, I'm only saying that she has a great affection for him. We all know of mothers who can't find anyone worthy enough for their sons."

Mrs Hugh-Price could think of several examples, and enumerated them to benefit the Coopers' sophistication. When she finally departed, Aunt Fitzmore said, "Elyned, I've sometimes thought you had just a bit, a _charming_ bit, of the country mouse, but do you know, I shall take it back. You are a _dragon_."

Aunt Elyned's smile stayed timid, but her eyes narrowed a very little bit. "Thank you. Does this mean you'll come to London with Gwenevra?"

"This Season, with Torchwood at liberty and Gwenevra finding herself, I should not miss if you offered me a castle in Italy. Gwenevra, dear, we _must_ fit you for the green-and-gold striped twill!"

"Will a London frock impress Lord Torchwood?" asked Gwen, remembering the eclectic Torchwood ménage, where shirtsleeves or Chinese wrappers were favored over any recognizable proper dress.

"It will impress Lady Satoe and her friends, who are certainly important in making your season a success," said Aunt Fitzmore.

Aunt Elyned said, "Gwen, you mustn't think Lord Torchwood will develop a _tendre_ for you. And if he did, it would only make things excessively awkward!"

"Lady Satoe -- and her daughter -- would hardly appreciate your seeming to want a conquest of Lord Torchwood. It is the _other_ gentlemen, and indeed all the guests, whom we must hope will see you in a favorable light."

"What gentlemen might Gwen impress here in Cardiff?" asked Uncle Fitzmore, who had followed the maid in with the tea-tray and was already helping himself to the cakes, "other than myself and Jacob? We think she's a vision of beauty, even allowing for a father's partiality."

Aunt Fitzmore looked Gwen over again, a bit like Miss Butterworth looking over a new maid, but what she said was, "She will be, brother. Depend on it."

#

Lady Satoe's soirée proved to be a musical afternoon of sorts, although only the performers seemed to care. A quartet of players had been engaged to play for the company, and a pianoforte had been placed on the dais as well.

Gwen wore the grand London afternoon dress with gold ribbons, and felt she looked very fine. Lady Satoe greeted them kindly, even warmly, as Uncle Fitzmore introduced Jacob Cooper and Gwenevra and Andrew to Baron Satoe and Miss Satoe.

"You look beautiful, Miss Cooper." Her eyes assessed Gwenevra and the dress. "I hope you'll enjoy the afternoon. Do I understand you've met my daughter?"

"Gwenevra! I mean, welcome, Miss Cooper," said Toshi, her sleek hair done up now in curls and knots of silver ribbon, wearing pale-gold silk that set off her ivory complexion and dark eyes. "I remember you and Mr Cooper. Do you like music?"

"I'm sure I shall."

With that, they passed into a drawing room large enough that the dozen guests in it seemed a small number. Those dozen were, Aunt Fitzmore whispered, half of the people who in Cardiff passed for _ton_, and Gwenevra should be able to secure acquaintance with every one of them, if she wanted to practice how to go about doing such things in London.

Aunt Elyned said, while waving at a gentleman and two young ladies, "Gwen, do you know anything about music?"

"Not enough."

"Ah, good. You'll be more interested in the company, then. But don't talk about it."

Gwen met several friends of her Aunt Elyned, and was introduced to at least a half-a-dozen more people by her Aunt Fitzmore. Two young men showed a tendency to blush and stammer at her, and nobody at all felt a need to talk about music.

When next she looked around the room, the crowd of guests had more than doubled, and she was glad to see Toshi among them. Toshi arrived next to her a moment later and exchanged remarks with young Mr Wellan that indicated she regarded him in the light of a younger brother and that Gwenevra should too. Both he and Mr Hanton took themselves off in short order, not without a wistful glance each at Gwen.

"I wish I could do that," said Gwenevra.

"Do what? Run off your suitors? I think it comes naturally to me, Gwen. Here, let's hide here behind the quartet while everyone else is flooding into the refreshment room. We can get something to eat later. There's always too much food at Mother's soirées."

"I'll believe you about that. Tell me, is Torchwood House known for its library and the natural-science observations and Lord Torchwood's observatory? I haven't wanted to speak of them to anyone quite yet."

A momentary look of concern crossed the square, neat-featured face. "Have you talked about anything you saw there?"

"It's all so..." unconventional, improper... "so unusual, that I didn't think it would be proper. I was there in confidence, so to speak."

"Goodness, whatever _did_ you say about it? I'm sure your father, and your aunt and uncle, wanted to know."

"I talked about Miss Estelle's watercolor paintings, but the piece I remember best is a drawing you'd done."

Toshi glanced beyond her and then turned closer to Gwen to whisper, "Oh, dear, surely it's not one of the anatomies!"

"Not at all. It was in the gallery, a study of, that is, a man's head."

Toshi's face went blank, and a faint blush colored her cheeks. "Oh, that's Lord Torchwood. He has lovely ears."

Gwen said, blankly, "Ears?"

"Don't you think so?"

Gwen felt a giggle rising, and quelled it. "I didn't notice the _ears_ so much as the smile and the eyebrows and the, ah, hands and arms when he's tucked up his shirtsleeves. I suppose his ears must be something to see as well." And how had Toshi got to see them?

Toshi continued to blush. "I was right. You're going to have to come again to Torchwood House, to be a thorn in Owen's side. Besides..."

"What?"

"Have you heard that Suzie is crying off? She can't deal with Jack, she thinks."

"I, ah... yes, I've heard gossip."

"It's true, and it will make everything more difficult. I don't even try to deal with Jack and Owen."

"But aren't you all coming to London soon? Won't that change everything?"

"Not everything." The pitch of Toshi's voice became more conversational as she added, "And do tell me what you think of the quartet."

"They're very pretty," said Gwen, cautiously.

She heard a gasp of laughter, Aunt Elyned's laughter, from behind her. "Gwenevra, Antoshica, it's wonderful to see you so friendly already. I've been sent to tell you that Lady Satoe wants to introduce you to someone."

Gwen looked, and saw the tall figure she already recognized without effort as the Earl of Torchwood in the room's entrance, speaking to Lady Satoe's tiny crimson-and-white figure.

"Let's go make sure you can talk to Jack without anyone wondering why," said Toshi. "I'm not at all sure that he realizes he's not engaged to Suzie any more."

Thus Miss Cooper publicly made the acquaintance of Lord Torchwood, who was visibly charmed by her in the presence of everybody who was anybody in Cardiff society. He kissed her hand. She blushed and curtsied. He claimed her company, with Antoshica's, to listen to the performance of Italian Sonatas on the pianoforte by two of the young ladies present, and brought her a glass of ratafia afterwards. It was quite certain that everybody who was anybody in Cardiff knew that the Earl of Torchwood was not mourning Miss Costellon's departure, and that he was very much celebrating Miss Cooper's arrival. There would be gossip within hours.

Doctor Harper, who attended the soirée in the Earl's wake, quite properly asked Lady Satoe for an introduction to the Coopers, and then begged Roger Fitzmore for permission to call at the Fitzmore home before they left for London.

"Won't you be travelling to London this year, Harper?" asked Uncle Fitzmore.

"Don't know," said Doctor Harper, and then appeared to realize that the answer was insufficient. "The thing is, you see, a friend's wife is ill, and everything depends on her state."

Lord Torchwood heard this, and looked up. "I may stay long enough in Cardiff to keep Ianto company with Lisa, but I _will_ go to London." His smile was as dazzling as ever. "I want to dance at Miss Cooper's debut ball. Gwen, will you save me a dance, and another?"

She hadn't asked him to call her by name. She didn't care. "Yes, my lord," said Gwen. "I'll dance with you."

# # #


End file.
